Weight loss drug from highly toxic plant can now be produced in yeast

A traditional Chinese medicinal plant has huge potential as a weight loss drug. However, due to the plant's notorious toxicity, no one has yet succeeded in exploiting it effectively.

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Researchers from the University of Copenhagen have not only found the formula for the synthetic production of the compound – they have even found a simple and sustainable recipe using ordinary yeast as the main ingredient. In China children are taught to steer clear of this plant. The plant, Thunder god vine (Chinese: 雷公藤), which in China has earned the nickname “Seven Steps to Death”, is so poisonous that a person risks death only a few steps after consuming it. But despite its deadliness, the Thunder god vine (Tripterygium wilfordii) hides something quite beneficial to us humans as well. Within its roots, the plant produces the compound celastrol, a chemical agent with powerful antiobesity properties.

Experiments using mice on a high fat diet have shown that the mice given celastrol gained 45% less weight than the control group. 

Experiments with human cells have shown similar effects.

The effect is due to the fact that celastrol reactivates the body's sensitivity to leptin, a hormone to which overweight people become resistant. Leptin is one of the hormones that causes the body to burn more calories and thereby regulate weight. How does one get their hands on the 'good' substance without the toxicity that typically accompanies it? That is the question. 

For obvious reasons, a person cannot just eat the plant and benefit from the drug. So what do we do? The problem with extracting celastrol from the nature source is that it is very hard to separate it from the other toxic molecules that the plant is full of. So far, there has been no effective method to achieve this.